Police seek suspect in beer-distributor heists

A seri­al burg­lar bus­ted in­to a pair of North­east Phil­adelphia beer dis­trib­ut­ors early this month, but he wasn’t after suds.

In­stead, he was par­tial to ci­gar­ettes, lot­tery tick­ets and any cash that happened to be ly­ing around, po­lice say. And he doesn’t seem shy of sur­veil­lance cam­er­as, either.

Thanks to se­cur­ity equip­ment, de­tect­ives have plenty of im­ages of the man who used bricks to break in­to Krewstown Bever­age, at 8900 Krewstown Road, on Aug. 2, then Pennypack Beer Dis­trib­ut­or, at 8120 Roosevelt Blvd., six days later.

Po­lice hope someone will re­cog­nize the man in the im­ages and sup­ply them with his name.

The first break-in oc­curred at about 12:50 a.m. The crook smashed a glass door to the busi­ness, grabbed an un­deter­mined amount of ci­gar­ettes and fled on foot. However, mo­ments be­fore the burg­lary, the sus­pect stopped at the Wawa con­veni­ence store next door. A sur­veil­lance cam­era filmed him there, po­lice said.

The next break-in oc­curred at 4:35 a.m. Again, the man smashed a glass door be­fore grabbing an un­deter­mined amount of lot­tery tick­ets and $150 cash. He fled on foot. Po­lice be­lieve the same man may have been in­volved in an­oth­er burg­lary in Ben­s­alem Town­ship.

He is de­scribed as white and 30 years old with short blond hair. He wore blue jeans and a gray shirt dur­ing both loc­al burg­lar­ies. Call 215-686-TIPS or send a text mes­sage to PP­DTIP (773847) to re­port in­form­a­tion about him. ••